Hollywood's 20 Masters of Horror: The Twisted Talents Raising the Most Hell

Horror, both real and fantastical, has been a part of del Toro’s life for as long as he can remember. As a child, he stood in his crib and watched The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone on the TV across the room. As a teen living in Mexico, he volunteered at a psychiatric hospital and snuck into the morgue next door: “In the beginning, I was fascinated by the images. And I feel that in many ways I still am,” he says, taking a break from shooting the pilot for FX’s vampire series The Strain, based on the novel he co-wrote with ChuckHogan.

“There is a place in my heart that is truly only reached by the fantasy and horror genre.” One look at the films he has directed (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim) or produced (The Orphanage, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Mama) and one can see del Toro always has striven to give horror a certain emotional poetry.

Del Toro’s creativity is on display in Cabinet of Curiosities, a new book offering a peek inside Bleak House, his amazing 10,000-square-foot compound in Agoura Hills, Calif. — a horror version of GeorgeLucas’ Skywalker Ranch — and his personal journals.

“Every time I walk into Bleak House, I smile. It has this great creative effect on me. … The beauty of the genre is its range,” says del Toro, 49, who will shoot the gothic romantic horror film Crimson Peak in February. “In horror, there is always something left to do.”